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Wednesday, July 02, 2008

Tacky fuel tactic creates hostile climate

A new financial year finds The Australian columnist Philip Adams depressed about our response to climate change. He takes it out on us: Add warming to list of failures

WHY do we have such a rotten national anthem? It's because the only words that rhyme with Australia are dahlia and failure. Even Les Murray couldn't do much with them. Mind you, a sort of mulga-wood version of the Marsellaise, emphasising Australian failure rather than French triumphalism would fit the local psyche like a shroud. Because were into failure in a big way. Think of all the films weve made about our failures. Even before Gallipoli and Burke & Wills there was Sunday Too Far Away where Jack Thompson failed to be the gun shearer, Petersen where Thompson failed to succeed at Melbourne Uni and Picnic at Hanging Rock where almost the entire cast failed to return from a picnic. Not to mention the two McKenzie films wherein despite his desperate efforts Bazza, that archetypal Australian hero, failed to lose his virginity.

Ouch, Phil. He's pissed off because the opposition are bailing out of the bipartisan approach to an all inclusive emissions trading system, in favour of short term politics over petrol pricing. And because the Government are not quite delivering on their election pitch.

Before the federal election this column called on the presumptive PM to proffer the Opposition, along with the premiers, full representation in a war cabinet. To at least pretend we were tackling a problem that makes the Cold War look penny ante, let alone that trivial war on terror. Rudd made a few moves in the bipartisan direction, on a number of issues, but having shown reluctant interest (on Sorry Day and 2020 for example), Brendan's switched to giving Kev the finger. He's reduced this vast issue to populist posturing about the price of petrol. Let's fix this week's polls rather than the terminal pollution. And for the Libs and the Nats it's more urgent to get a Gippslandslide against Rudd at the weekend.

I'm pissed off too. A pox on both their houses. We voted for a new kind of politics Kev, Brendo; to tackle serious problems that playing poll politics won't solve.

Adam's notes that the importance of the issue isn't lost on Rudd though, nor is his dilemma.

The only war cabinet seems to be Kevin's as his comrades quarrel over emission trading, ever responsive to the people they really represent. The various interests of the vested variety.

Rudd knows he must crash through or crash on climate change. The issue is producing a predictable range of reactions. As well as ongoing denial there's already boredom and fatalism. Then there's let's-buy-a-Hummer hedonism. But worst of all will be the Opposition's opportunism. Reduce the scale of the argument to the price of petrol.

Nelson's mob don't deserve anything good for that short term tacky tactic. Poetic justice would have them experience blow-back and, unlike Adams, I'm glass half-full about that.